Your Small City Can Have More Transit | Helsinki
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 มิ.ย. 2024
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Helsinki is a city much smaller than your average North American major cities, but what it does have are multiple transit modes - metro, tram, commuter rail - that all work together to provide seamless transit for its residents - something we can learn a lot about.
Special thanks to Aidan Powell & Edison Zhang for providing footage used in this video!
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
Folks, as mentioned in the video - Helsinki is *comparatively* small. There is no objective measurement of comparative city size, but RMTransit is a global TH-cam channel and compared to the cities we often talk about with grand metro and regional rail systems, Helsinki just is not that large at around 1 million people. Even within the general area, Helsinki is smaller than Copenhagen and Stockholm while, still having a metro system. This is not a dig at Helsinki, but rather me praising the city for having an impressive transportation network given its size! I have spent time in the city, and I really enjoyed it!
there are words between "big" and "small" could've said something like "medium sized" instead of small and nobody would've complained lmao
@@aburrki6732 Nah, Helsinki has around 600.000 residents and the metropolitan area has around 1 million. That is small in this world. But as said, size depends on what you compare it to. Medium sized could have worked, but that would be more like stockholm.
@@Tuukkohakee there are cities of like a couple thousand people lmao, saying that that's on the same level of small as a city of a million plus is a bit silly.
@@aburrki6732 Well, size is relative. And Helsinki is small for its transport system. Helsinki doesnt really make it into the medium size, so it is still small compared to european cities considered medium sized. Ofc compared to villages and towns it is a large city.
@@rikhardpatriksson5488 Yep, I agree with you on the three cities being one. Thanks for the official numbers too. I would say it borders between being a medium and a small city on global scale, but if I had to pick one I would say it is a small city. However i get it that it all depends on what you compare it to and therefore will not spend the rest of my evening arguing about it :)
For me as a European, when reading the title I thought you would mention a city with under 100.000 inhabitants that still has a tramway system. Because there are many cities like that.
I don't think of Helsinki as a small city.
Still a good video though.
For having a metro (even in Europe) it’s fairly small
@@RMTransit That is right.
Btw. I think there is nothing wrong with the title. It made me click on the video really fast.
Even though I didn't expect a video about Helsinki with that title. I really loved the video.
@@RMTransit Germany has cities half the size with metro operating trams. Helsinkies size is quite normal for a metro. Major/big cities are 100k upwards
I agree with you. Helsinki is not a small city with a city population of 658,864 (31 Dec 21). To me a small city is less the 300, 000 people.
@@chrismckellar9350 for me under 100k is small. In Germany major cities are 100k+ living in a 160k city (with whole city region over 300k) those cities can seem really big tbh
Tampere, another city in Finland, recently built a tram network (well, two whole lines) that replaced one of our busiest bus lines and I have to say it's been a *massive* improvement. The tram is much more comfortable than a bus and I have yet to see it packed full of people, unlike the bus which sometimes would be so full that it would skip stops because there would literally be no space to take on more passengers.
The tram project completed ahead of schedule and as far as I can tell has just been a massive success by every metric.
I was just about to say the same. Tampere would merit a video of its own because of the huge recent advances in public transport. Historically Tampere had a very extensive bus network but the tramway has really revolutionized the city. Ridership is significantly up from pre-covid times, unlike in comparably-sized cities in Finland (like Turku). Then again, Tampere has a track record as the long-time favourite city of the Finns according to opinion polls, ahead of Helsinki. As the second city in the country (well, technically third but Espoo doesn’t really count as it is just a part of the Helsinki region), Tampere has mostly been spared of such vanity projects that eat up budget funds in the Helsinki region. When you are operating on a shoestring budget, you have to think clearly and prioritize.
Helsinki has truly splurged on its metro, which could have easily been substituted with a tramway network providing much better and wider service for the same price. The ring rail line was another white elephant project that suffers from low-ish ridership compared to the huge cost of tunneling under the airport. Helsinki airport would in fact have been better served by diverting mainline trains to a new north-south tunnel under the airport instead of the current commuter rail only east-west tunnel, and such a project is actually being planned. Serving an airport with two rail links sounds excessive but of course they had to start with the less useful one…
Commuter rail is an area which Helsinki does relatively well. The secret is the right institutional setup. HSL works as the organizing authority, and they recently held a competitive bidding process, which was won by the incumbent VR but at a price tag 40 % lower than before, which saved quite a lot of taxpayers’ money. Tampere has struggled in getting commuter rail services started up because its organizing authority, Nysse, is not legally authorized to organize rail transport but outside of the Helsinki region, the competence remains solely with the Ministry of Transport and Communications, who are not really the right interested party to do much about it. A minor change in law would be needed but the issue has become politically contentious in Parliament as it is opposed by left-wing parties with ties to rail unions, who in turn lobby for the protection of the last remnants of VR’s monopoly status even against EU legislation mandating the opening of competition on rails.
Plenty of interesting intrigue for a video, I suppose? In addition to some truly exemplary developments of course.
@@janihyvarinen73 Would the north-south rail connection to the airport terminate at the airport, or continue north to allow for local and/or regional trains on the same corridor? It would be kind of sweet to not have to transfer in Tikkurila for travellers coming from other cities, but it's not really a primary concern either.
Oslo's airport train corriodor is serviced by three lines: The direct airport train with no stops between Oslo and the airport, a local train with several stops inbetween, and a regional train with just a few stops inbetween (or maybe it's just one?), but it goes north beyond the airport and south beyond Oslo. They are each viable for getting to and from the airport for different travellers who need to go to different places, and two of them serve other non-airport traffic as well. I think it works quite well.
@@komfyrion the North-South airport link would continue North and connect with the lines towards Tampere and Lahti. It is meant mainly as a long-distance rail link to the airport and could potentially alleviate capacity issues on the Finnish North-South mainline corridor
@@janihyvarinen73 Espoo isn't a city. It is collection of various suburbs of Helsinki. It doesn't have clear downtown.
@@janihyvarinen73 i actually dont think the ring rail was a bad investment at all, because it is much more than just an airport rail connection, and it in fact does not suffer from low ridership, at least riding it the trains are often very much full. The main benefit is the east west connection in a city where most transit radiates from the center outwards, and it excels in that matter. Also as far as tunneling goes, the lentorata is not any better, though it absolutely is an important investment too, mainly for the people from other finnish cities, not too much for locals. (Me for example, the ring rail provides a better airport connection than lentorata ever could). And as far as the west metro goes, i very much enjoy having it and so do many people according to polls, but i see the case for a tramway too, its just not as fast a connection and now for me at least the metro would feel hobbled without it as the espoo to east helsinki demand absolutely exists.
11:50 Those metro stations were not built 'oversized' without reason : They double also as an escape route nuclear bunker ! Helsinki alone has over 5000 underground bunker sites , often with peace time functions like indoor sport centres, karting track, children playground, underground parking , children playground centre and even a swimming pool ..Back in the day I had a big Student Tecno party, with a couple of thousand, in a bunker in Tampere (fittingly named 'Boombarit' or something like that ..)
(Toronto is not the only town with an 'underground city' 😉)
I’m suprised that you didn’t mention the ”Kruunusillat” project. It is basically a new express-tram-line that connects islands in Helsinki. The tramline will include Finland’s longest bridge. It’s intresting because no car is allowed on that bridge. Only pedestrians, cyclists and trams. Im sure there is some info in english if you are intrested. Good video!
It's gonna kill the views from Mustikkamaan uimaranta though =(
It’s debatable whether or not this tram bridge can be considered an example of good transit planning and efficient use of money. The price tag is horrendous for what you end up getting.
@@fairdragon79 Is there an other option that connects the large and densely populated island to the city?
@@lauri9061 Yes, connect it through the metro network. I believe that’s what Mr RM also favors as the solution for a challenging geography.
@@fairdragon79 To make a metro branch to Laajasalo makes zero sense. It would mess up the intervals on the other branches and end up costing more that the whole bridge. The bridge and new tracks only costs about 400 M€, you can get like one or two metro stations for that.
When I visited Helsinki we used public transit exclusively and it never even occurred to me that Helsinki might be a "small" city. The amount of and coverage of transit never left us wanting. Helsinki is A++. :)
Little mention of the buses, which fill in a lot of local-service gaps not covered by the tram network (especially in Espoo, Vantaa, and the easternmost suburbs), and no mention at all of the small number of *ferry* services which connect some islands to the mainland, and are considered part of Helsinki's public transport network. If you want to visit the historical fort of Suomenlinna, you'll be taking one of those ferries.
Also of crucial importance is Helsinki's integrated ticket system. It's based on a number of zones which used to correspond to the municipal boundaries, but which are now altered. Buying a ticket for a given zone (or set thereof) allows you to use, and transfer between, *all* of these different modes of transport, for any number of journey legs within the given time limit. You really can catch the ferry in from Suomenlinna, take the tram to connect with the metro line, and then a bus from one of Espoo's metro-centred transport hubs, all on a single fare. Or arrive at the airport and use a single fare from there to get anywhere within the Helsinki transport network. Residents and regular visitors can use a smart travelcard to pay for these tickets in advance (even as a season ticket), while visitors can buy paper tickets at any of the city's car parking meters (as well as at metro stations or from train conductors).
Having lived there in the past, one of the most striking things is how all of this keeps moving even in severe winter conditions. A blizzard can definitely throw the schedule into chaos, but they will keep the trains, buses and trams moving whenever humanly possible, and even the ferries can usually find their way through Baltic Sea ice. So you might get home late, but you *will* get home.
I'd add to this that there's also lendable bicycles to use in fairly large area of the city that operate using the same integrated travel card system. And they're very popular as well for short distances inside the city or to use as a chilled day trip mode of transportation. The bike stations where you can pick up and return one are found online or via an app and have been pretty efficiently spread into the different neighborhoods of the city.
This show is my Saturday morning coffee! When I think of small city and transit I think of Lausanne, Switzerland - a population of 130,000 people that has an automated subway with high annual ridership. The thing about more transit in small cities is that these cities need to be developed around transit - ie dense areas where high capacity warrants high capacity vehicles and where a transit stop is with in a 10 minute walk. In North America, it takes forever to walk from a residential area to a main road to catch a bus. Side note - have you noticed that aside from Kennedy Station, there are no parking spots along line 5?
I think land use is important of course, but if you have SOME population and a good service people will use it!
@@jandron94 thanks for the clarification on that! But still, at 400,000, less than half of my city of Mississauga, they are able to build and run a light metro
Lausanne also has commuter rail, a planned tram line and a planned m3
@@jandron94 our city is in the process of building a single light rail line along a busy corridor. This is great for people already using transit along this corridor and for people heading into our neighboring city Toronto as this new LRT will connect to two commuter rail stations. However, if the plan is to get people out of their cars into the LRT, they still have to factor in that you require a bus to get to the LRT as there are no parking lots along this route. Also, for number of people living in Mississauga, journeys neither start nor finish along this route. Given our cold winters and the fact that a five minute car ride would take 30 minutes on a bus, we need to do a lot more to woo motorists out of their cars
@@japanesetrainandtravel6168 Having lived in both Helsinki and Lausanne I appreciate this comment. Lausanne really has a fantastic public transit system for a city of its size. Though it helps that the city and the main suburbs are along the main rail line on the north side of Lake Geneva, so you get the commuter rail lines almost "for free".
I moved to Helsinki from the UK over 13 years ago. I brought my car with me, but soon realised it was a bad option. Very expensive to run (in Finland) and expensive to park (in Helsinki). Within two years it was sold and I've only used the public transport ever since. Of course, there are occasions when it is a pain not having a car (e.g. transporting heavy stuff), but these are mostly one-offs. The biggest problem now is having ridiculously raised expectations of the system. Being annoyed at having to change once or twice to get to certain places, or having to walk 500 metres! I then remind myself of the UK....
If you need a car occasionally you can also rent one (or you can rent a van in the case of transporting heavy stuff).
Owning a car in Helsinki is cheap compared to London.. No stupid emission zones and parking is cheaper. Although the greedy city government tripled the price of residence parking in 2023
I had to good fortune to live in Helsinki for the summer of 2006 and while I had previously visited European cities it was the first place I had the "holy sh!t, why can't we have transit and development like this where I'm from" moment. Seeing service AND new development happen at the same time, working to support one another left me agog. Living there on an architectural work/study I kept asking my Finnish colleagues to explain to me how this was happening and they mostly just shrugged not understanding how I found something so amazing, that was to them so commonplace.
I still don't understand.
Helsinki is building tram and metrotracks at the moment because Helsinki is growing fast.
I think in 2006 they we're building the traintrack to airport and and more metrotrack on that only line.
I recently had an overnight layover in Helsinki and found that taking the train from the airport to the main train station was incredibly convenient and fast. The train almost felt like a metro. I was very impressed and wished it was so easy in New York City.
You mentioned the already-dug metro stop under Kamppi, as a preparation for a future north-south line, which is a really cool thing but not the only one! There are five stations for the metro that have already been dug, the most recent one in 2019 at the Tripla shopping center. This is all due to the economies of working underground in Helsinki- digging extra caverns, once you're down there, is fairly cheap. There are also several places where underground space is reserved for a commuter loop through the center.
Both of these plans are extremely unlikely to happen in the next decade, or even the next 30 years, but it's cool to see people thinking ahead.
Helsinki tram network is expanding, with a new route to Ilmala district opening in October. The second tram system in Finland was opened in Tampere in August 2021. There are currently two routes, and extension of route 3 is under construction. The Tampere network uses standard gauge of 1435 mm.
Technically Tampere is the 4th overall as Turku and Viipuri also used to have trams.
@@katariina3319 Technically yes. Hopefully Turku will have trams back.
The video about the tram discussions before Tampere got its tram is gold. "blind people won't be able to see it, and deaf people won't be able to hear it" 🤣
I forgot Lauttasaari and Kulosaari from my previous comment. There was a shorlived horse tramway in Lauttasaari. The Kulosaari system had a steam ferry to carry to trams to the island until a brigde was built.
@@miridium121 That debate in Tampere city council was chaired by Sanna Marin, who likely got enough political lift from it to rise in the ranks of her Social-Democratic party to be a vice chairman, and subsequently the new chairman and prime minister after her predecessor had to resign. The debate was legendary in its sheer pinheadedness but luckily the outcome was positive as the tram project got approved with clear numbers.
I really appreciate hearing about which mode of transit is more ideal for which situation. This is what I’m constantly explaining to people: it’s about the right tool for the job. Cars aren’t evil, but we’re using them in situations where other tools would be better.
Just by looking at the music video of Darude - Sandstorm you see people using the folowing modes of transport:
Cycling, bus, a tram, sitting still, parkour, trains and boat riding.
Great video as always! Not sure if this was already addressed in the comments, but I think the massive underground bus terminal at Kamppi would've warranted a mention too :D It serves both local and intercity buses and is located in the same complex as the metro station of the same name, although the transfer between the two isn't the shortest
As someone born and raised in Helsinki, I have never felt so honoured and patriotic about my home while watching this video. Great video, and the good ol' orange coloured metro will always be my favourite! :)
Helsinki is definitely on my list of cities to visit, not least for its transit network. However friends of mine who visited there a few years ago really loved it. Don't know when I'll get there... but I *will* get there! Interesting overview... as always.
If you do visit Helsinki I recommend doing it during the summer. The temperatures are usually nicest in june and july, and while yes, there's an uptick in tourism, it's not really that bad.
dont forget to check out the island ferries. my favourite is itäinen saaristoreitti by FRS Finland, check them out, only available during summer season
It’s a lovely city!
Also worth noting that the main ferry to the historic site on the islands called Suomenlinna uses the same ticket as all other transit in town, so as long as you have a valid ticket for that, you can get there without paying extra. The hsl app which handles all tickets has some nice options for multi day tickets, which is perfect for tourists :)
@@miridium121 Also don't forget August, which is usually a lot warmer than June. Early June can be a bit chilly if you are from anywhere south. Tourism peaks usually in July but also many Finns are on their summer vacation so some businesses could be even shut down. Also, if not doing it on purpose to have calm city, do not travel to weekend city holiday to Helsinki during midsummer weekend. (Saturday which is between 20th and 26th of June).
I just returned from Helsinki three days ago. It was quite the contrast to take public transport there everywhere including to the airport, compared with New York, where even getting from JFK to Grand Central is barely doable on transit. Moreover, winters can be really brutal in Finland, yet it doesn’t seem to affect transit reliability by much.
By much is the key. Somehow the first snow surprises the rail operator every year without fail even though forecasts exist and there is snow on the ground pretty much every year.
talvi yllätti koko suomen
I was recently in Helsinki for a couple of days, and it was the most pleasant city to get around in, I have ever been in. I actually got to try both the commuter rail, tram, metro and ferry. It was so easy to figure out, cheap, fast and so convenient in every way.
FINALLY, HELSINKI!!! Thankyou so much for making this video!!
Thanks for watching!
Having lived in helsinki for a summer in a suburban student accommodation and commuting into the city most days, the bus network is also pretty amazing, with local buses serving areas outside the city then running express to the city, its fast, efficient and reliable. Also the suburbs of Helsinki (at least where I lived) consist of higher-density apartment blocks surrounded by forests, which mean the sprawl is less and makes transit easier, maybe it is due to the winters that people prefer living in these types of accom over single family homes
The high-density apartment blocks are in part a result of the massive rural exodus that happened after WW2
Maybe you could do a video about Helsinki's 'sister city' Tallinn on the other side of the Bay of Finland. Contrary to Finland, Estonia was under the Soviet occupation and is now catching up to its Northern neighbor. The system in Tallinn is not as good as Helsinki's (in my opinion) since most public transportation routes use buses, but there's also a tram system and commuter train. There are also some trolleybus routes, but they are slowly closing them down. Both tram and commuter train are planned to have massive upgrades and new lines opened in the coming decades. There's also a possible plan to build a railway tunnel between Tallinn and Helsinki to connect the two Finnic countries better since right now there are only two ways to reach the other side of the bay - 2 hour ship or 30 minute flight. You can actually use Tallinn's public transportation smart-card in Helsinki and vice versa for purchasing tickets, so the systems are interconnected. And I forgot to add that the most unique thing about Tallinn's public transportation is that it's free of charge to all residents of the city as well as all children and elderly of the whole country. Whether it is a good or a bad thing is another topic. So yeah, if you're interested in covering Tallinn as a city with developing public transportation system then I'd happily help you with information.
I didn't know you could use the HSL card in Tallin. Will have to try it next time I visit!
This is one of your best videos! I remember a few years back when you opted for rapid transit mainly. You were treating metros and trams as opponents. But in fact, they're on the same team. That's together with buses and trains. I'm glad you've changed your approach. :)
I think another great case for this is Nürnberg! It has Germanys currently only automated metro (my home town of cologne with twice the population only has a Stadtbahn network) trams and s, regio & long distance trains. It just shows if you’re actually willing to make transit s good option for people and implement it well there’s so much potential even in comparably to 1m+ smaller cities
And the Nuremberg Metro system take its line No 2 directly to the Nuremberg Airport...
They also reserved space for a future metro station on the possible North-South line in the new Mall of Tripla some ways North of the city center! It's used as commercial space in the meantime.
Awesome to hear the forward thinking!
There's yet another preexcavated station hall parallel to the Hakaniemi metro station. That was similarly intended for a second metro line, like the spare hall below the Kamppi metro station, and has more recently been planned to become part of the city commuter rail loop. Now the rail loop tunnel seems unlikely to happen, though, so I guess the spare hall continues to be used as a technical space for the time being.
Helsinki is famous for pioneering the concept of an underground master plan. As a result they have one central plan that details where things like proposed future metro lines would go.
London, while it mostly has suburban rail to its airports, also has the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, and the Docklands Light Railway as the only rail link to City Airport.
In Edinburgh, the tram is the only rail link to the airport.
And the Tyne and Wear metro is the only rail link to Newcastle airport
@@camhalls9366 There is speculation that a rail link is going to be built via Wideopen to the airport. I hope so as it is not before time!
The Elizabeth Line also goes to Heathrow. Manchester's trams also go to the Airport up here.
The green-&-gold trams are like, perfect for Canberra.
I do really like the Color scheme!
@@RMTransit So nice, especially with the picturesque grassy tracks and streetscapes!
Also Helsinki metro was the shortest in the world when it was built. The metro was super expensive to build because instead of stations just below ground level we built bunkers, stations that would double up as bomb shelters. All major city center metro stations have massive steel doors just in front of the escalators. Part of the metro money were unofficially embezzled from the metro project towards other underground infrastructure and tunnels which were kept secret up until the 90s and the end of cold war. Citys military defence projects were camouflaged with embezzling scandals yet nowadays the city has enough tunnels and infra to house a brigade or two underground and move around to all parts of the city.
how can a city with 1 million metro population, a capital of a country, be considered a "small city"?
I think it's relative to North America
@@betula2137 being a capital means a city is the center for international business and relations of the country, which makes having good transit a must. Not sure many small cities in North America have this distinction
@Zaydan Naufal I don't think a video on Tirana, if you are talking about the capital of Albania, would work. There is only buses at the moment, so not much to talk about.
@@rehurekj In the UK, I think of a small city as being about 200,000 people.
One million is officially considered a medium sized city and a large city is 3.5 million or greater
It's a bit funny to hear Helsinki tram being praised, because for the longest time it has been the red-headed stepchild of the Helsinki transit system!
It just narrowly avoided being dismantled in the 60s (thanks, oil chrisis) and after that development mostly stopped so there is considerable technical debt with bad track geometries and tread running switches. The network has also had some growth prssures for a while, the coverage is mostly the same as it was in the 1930s while the city around the network has grown.
That said, it's not all bad. The amount of dedicated right of way got steadily increased and then upgraded from painted lines to raised curbs (too narrow in some places though). Street level boarding was elimated and then proper 30cm platforms were built proactively when it became clear that low floor would be the future.
Was it actually street level boarding before low floor trams or sidewalk level boarding? Plenty of European tram systems did have platform stops of some description long before low floor trams.
You might have eliminated boarding from street/sidewalk level, but even when it became clear low floor trams would be the future, you did not eliminate bad track geometries.
When you got the first of your low floor trams, it was apparently thought that short segment trams on fixed bogies would be the future. These have entire segments that have to move along with the bogies, wheres with high floor trams, they are pulled more gradually. But instead of fixing the track geometry, you got rid of your Variotrams and bought trams with longer segments, slightly higher interior floors, slight inclines next to the doors and over the bogies.
Compulsory "Suomi mainittu"
The Transit sistem is quite good even if not perfect. One fun fact: they are planning to unify all tickets in one price for all Helsinki. It will be a little bit more expensive but easier for everyone.
Well, more expensive for some, cheaper for someone else 😉
I've been waiting for your video on Helsinki for ages! I'm very interested, as I use the transportation system regularly.
London takes its metro to the airport - Heathrow is on the end of the London Underground's Piccadilly Line. It's historically been cheapest if slightly slowest way to get there - though the Elizabeth Line is now clearly the better choice.
One interesting thing about the Piccadilly Line going to Heathrow is that it isn't just for people flying from there - Heathrow is a big employer in its part of west London and lots workers have to get there, so the Tube serves them as much as it does passengers.
Helsinki also has a boat service to Suomenlinna as part of its regular transit system.
The footage at 9:02 is not of the metro, but the local train that runs to the airport! It goes underground for a couple of miles in order to take passengers close to the airport terminals!
(technically this is also in Vantaa, which is a different city, but eh, Helsinki Capital Region regardless, the transportation network is all handled by the same group, and only a local would be able to tell when you cross the border between one city and the other)
Yes, but I like the picture! I talk about the ring rail in the video!
@@RMTransit it's a nice picture. Also, it's sort of funny that the station next to it is called Aviapolis (you had footage of that one too) because there's a nonzero number of tourists that mistake it for the airport. Thankfully most of them ask "wait, is this the airport?" before leaving the train, and get told no by bemused locals 😅
I’m probably not the first to comment, but the London Tube goes all the way out to Heathrow (1 hour from central London), and until the Heathrow Express was built (15mins to Paddington), that was the only option.
I wouldn’t consider it Northern Europe haha, even though it probably qualifies yes
If you want some suggestions for small towns with interesting transport, you can mention Mariánské Lázně. Although they only have 12,000 inhabitants, they have a trolleybus network. You can also mention any other Czech or Central European city (according to you, almost every one falls into the category of a small city). I recommend, for example, Jihlava, Olomouc, Brno, Poznań, and there are certainly many other interesting ones.
Prague might count as a "small" city too! XD
Strakonice with circa 20 k people has barely buses in meantime. What a shame.
Meanwhile an architect (Liu Thai Ker) was envisioning that the city state of Singapore could eventually have the same population as the entire Czech Republic. Guess we'll really have to step up our public transport if we're going to accommodate that e.g. no more building of stations with platforms only 70m long
Small city really depends on the perspective. I think Lucerne, 70'000 (without metro area) and Switzerlands 11th largest city, is a small city.
It does have solid transport, abeit it's mostly (trolley) bus based with ~30 lines and a small number of S-Bahn stops. Still, it had 48.6 million annual passengers on VBL, the main bus network.
Edit: The constrained geography of Lucerne really would benefit from a Metro. It does seem to small for it, but there is only one main road going through the center with no space for an additional main route, both because of geography and the old town. It's an ongoing discussion, considering the heavy congestion of the roads, blocking buses where there isn't space for a bus lane.
I would think a city of 100-300k might be a small city, but not Helsinki with 650+k inhabitants
@@jandron94 The city itself uses Lucerne as the english version in all their communications.
Yeah I agree that it’s relative! And yea, constrained geography is great for metro!
@@jandron94 Some city and country names preserve the same spelling in English as the original Latin-alphabet spelling (Berlin, Paris, Quito, Montreal, Krakow, France, Portugal, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador..even Buenos Aires, Santiago, Trinidad, Iran), while other city and country names get a different spelling in English or in other languages than the original spelling (Munich/München, Lisbon/Lisboa, Lucerne/Luzern, Moscow/Moskva, Rome/Roma, Athens/Athenas, Switzerland/Schweiz, Norway/Norge, Spain/España, Ireland/Éire, Japan/Nippon, Greece/Ellada, Netherlands/Nederland, Brazil/Brasil).
Lucern would benifit much more with a bike network, as it is mostly flat with good weather and terrain.
A couple of the low floor trams from Helsinki were actually sold to the Schöneiche-Rüdersdorfer Straßenbahn, actually two villages owning a tram line that connects them to the Berlin S-Bahn network. Completely separated from the normal BVG lines.
They still have the livery from Helsinki.
The flexibility of buses is as you said a big advantage. It's great for figuring out where the line fits best. There are busroutes in Stockholm which has been rerouted several times. One of those runs from the university which meant large peaks with a lot of crowding. By making it shorter it became more reliable
My country meanwhile has had uproars recently when bus services were shortened/removed to reduced overlapping with & cannibalization of rail lines & their ridership, probably as passengers now need to make more transfers, & with some of the removed services being express ones, the rail lines they're overlapping are reportedly slightly slower when there're no traffic jams (as our railways don't have express service). Another possible reason for the uproar is that trains have fewer seats than buses per unit capacity
Valencia ha only about 20% more population than Helsinki. I Helsinki trams are nice as they go directly in the center of the city while buses typically sop at the railway station. The Jokeri or 550 line was originally intended to be with trams when was planned 30 years ago but for cost reasons they implemented it with buses starting in 2003.
Interestingly in the early 60s there was a plan for comprehensive metro network and they planned abolishing the trams when it was ready. Fortunately it did not happen.
Thanks for covering Helsinki. Metro-Helsinki is now a bit different as the Metro lines keep on expanding and we just got fast-tram lines (which are also expanding) that are circular and connect Metro and bus stops, large conjunction car parks in the out-skirts of the the area and seamlessly go to the existing tram network of the 'old centre' of 600,000 people.
Metro, Tram, Fast-Tram - all networks are expanding fast and sometimes take room from cars. The total area now covers 1.5 million people. (officially)
For the people in the US - 1.5m in Europe is big because we construct differently. Check from Google Street View. In Europe we try to pull everybody to a small 'city'. For example Salt Lake City to the Finnish eye is small and very sparse, almost rural where as Stockholm and Helsinki are Cities.
I live in Kolomna, a small town in Russia with a population of 140k people. We have buses and trams. The tram system serves all the main areas of the town, the historic center and several railway stations. Intervals are about 5-15 minutes, depending on routes, time of day and stops. By bus you can get to many of villages around the town. I really like our transit system, it is useful, most trams and buses are modern and in good condition.
One thing you didn’t mention is the ferry service to suomenlinna (also a part of the HSL commuter service and ticketing system) Thank you for this great video on my local transport system.
Moikka!
@@Brash_Candicoot No terve
I live in Helsinki, and I was just scrolling down my TH-cam, saw the videos photo, but did not read the name. I was like "Oh, they have those horrible M300 metros somewhere else too", and then looked at the tram, and realized its Helsinki. Nice video!
Hi Reece, loved the video, since I was a kid i always liked transit. If could make a video about Lisbon i would appreciated it very much, you could talk about the boats in which thousands of commuters travel everyday with frequencies reaching to 5 minutes apart in the rush hours. Thank you
It's so funny that on the S-Bahn from Karlsruhe you can travel further south than on the network of Stuttgart, which lies further south in the first place.
Karlsruhe is a weird place!
@@RMTransit Every S-Bahn line is essentially what the Metropolitan Line wanted to be forever. A link to the countryside.
Just looked it on the map, yeah, that length is certainly crazy, going as far as to Herrenberg where you can switch over to the S-Bahn of Stuttgart.
I totally have the same opinion even in really small cities there should be transit for example in Lauffen (city in germany with popolation of 10.000) it has a rail station with good trains to big cities every 10 minutes or so and the city of talheim (also in germany with a good bus service in 3 cities every 30 minutes and both have a bus service for the city itself
Yep, the lack of a large population does not mean there shouldn’t be accessible mobility!
Could they at least improve cycling infrastructure for short local trips, including to and from the railway station? This can displace short local transit trips and so transit can the be tailored for longer trips.
@@Myrtone I think that would be something quiete difficult to do but i think it could be worth a try asking the city council at some event because there are a lot of students and the quality is really not that great
@@nockto361 What is difficult to do? Cycling infrastructure is mostly very inexpensive and really easy to justify, so much so that the value of it should not be exchanged for more expensive and harder-to-justify transportation options.
@@Myrtone The streets that are bad (which are like two) there isnt a way that there is bike infrastructure because of just how small the roads are (you prolly would have to demolish buildings and no there isnt a way to relocate a bike track)
Oslo has a nearly exactly equal urban population as Helsinki, but its metro network is far bigger! Would be interesting to compare Oslo and Helsinki, and maybe the other nordic capitals to explain what caused them to develop so differently
I think a lot of it is geography. Helsinki center is very isolated on the tip of a peninsula with three possible exits, north towards the mainland, west to lauttasaari and onwards to espoo, and east through sörnäinen to kulosaari and eastern helsinki. And incidentally all three of these are already served by high capacity transit, commuter rail to the north and metro east and west. I agree that maybe there should be more branching of the metro in the center but i see why there are no more services with trams taking the bulk of urban traffic. Oslo on the other hand is less limited with it being in the bottom of a fjord instead of the tip of a peninsula which encourages more branching right in the center as opposed to the helsinki trains branching outside of the centre where geography is less limiting
Short answer. Suburban train lines which existed before metro.
Norway is much richer, that’s why Oslo has better transportation
@@mikelin6960 Oslo metro was developed long time ago when it was not so wealthy.
I live in Kolkata, the only city in India with trams in operation (it used to exist in many cities in India like Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, etc but all of them have been closed) but sadly it's losing its ridership and common people hardly board it regularly. It used to be the city's main transit for more than 5 decades (1940s - 1990s) but then it started to become a history. Routes were closed and many tracks were cemented. Now only 2 routes have regular services which once used to be 29. There are many reasons like to make space for the huge traffic on roads, to make way for metros and flyovers, etc. Also the tracks are on the middle of the road, which make it hard for people to board them compared to buses which can move from side to side. And then the tram tracks are not separated from the roads by a fence or something. So the cars enter their way and block the tracks, thus making the trams slow. These factors lead to huge losses for the company and thus the trams became history for most places in our city. Anyways I have a request that when you cover the metros of Indis, please also cover the Trams in Kolkata (and other cities) and the Mumbai Monorail.
On the topic of whether a city can be considered “small” or not, one thing to keep in mind is context. Helsinki might be the size of Boston or Kagoshima, but it is the capital and largest city of a sovereign nation. That means it has more institutions to facilitate (government, business, education, culture), more prestige, and more resources allocated to it than other cities of comparable size. Helsinki may be small on a global scale, but it is large and important within Finland, and that influences what infrastructure it can have.
I have been waiting for this video for long time :) thank you for doing this, I got idea 2hours ago that I could suggest you to do video about Helsinki
Dallas actually has 5 miles of track under Central Expressway, with the uptown station being 120 feet below ground and taking the diagonal elevator to the surface is an experience in itself. Also in final planning for additional subway under downtown.
I get that "small" is relative and it's not like there's an accepted definition of small, but if Helsinki were in the US it would be the 24th most populous city, with a similar population size to Boston. Maybe it's where I'm from, but when I think small city I think 50k-100k.
I really liked this video! Great work Reece!
Mostly the system is great but there have been some design mistakes too. The original metro line (the Helsinki peninsula and everything to the east) was built for trains of 6 cars but they decided to cut station building costs on the western extension and that part of the line only has room for 4 car trains, leading to a 1/3 max capacity reduction. Had Covid not reduced passanger volume, the eastern side would have been quickly approaching maximum volumes with no room to expand. However the tram and light rail extensions will help by providing more direct connections to the city center.
The Jokeri line is a good example of benefits of trams. The line was originally built as a BRT line to provide a diagonal connection to complement the mostly radial network. The line ended up being so popular that no amount of buses could provide enough capacity and had to be converted to light rail.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the shorter platforms were a design mistake, but rather a failure of building what was designed. Yes, the shorter platforms do limit the length of the trains, and thus decrease capacity, but what is often missed is that the plan was to install platform screen doors and automate the Metro system. This could have reduced headways from the current 3 minutes to something like 90 seconds, thus leading to a capacity increase. Platform screen doors would also allow for faster speeds when arriving to the station, meaning faster journeys.
The failure to automate the system had some other, shall we say interesting, consequenses. For example, as automated metros don't have drivers, they did not initially build any restrooms for drivers at the platform level. Also the talks about automation (and the suboptimal actions taken during covid) certainly did not help hiring and training new metro drivers, and combination of working conditions, pay, tight schedules, overtime and uncertain job security lead to driver shortage, and made it much more difficult to hire and train new drivers. Thus, the metro has seen more cancelled services, which in turn makes the trains quite full.
It's also interesting, that in the west, only one line runs till the end of the system, while there would be more demand for both lines to run till the end. I can only guess this is due to shortage of drivers and trains.
You compared with Tvärbanan in Stockholm and mentioned it's easier to travel n/s with one mode and e/w with another. That's exactly why Tvärbanan was built in the first place - the name roughly means "across track". It goes across from the subway lines. The subway goes into and out of the city centre, while Tvärbanan goes between parts of the suburbs. Due to Mälaren, the lake Stockholm is built upon (Stockholm literally means "log/fortification islet"), travelling between the north and south part is a bit difficult, but Tvärbanan helps with that as well.
I feel like frankfurt / the entire Rhein-Main-Gebiet in germany would be a great topic. It has some unique specialities due to the fact that there are multiple citys in close distance that need to function together.
The Rhine-Ruhr-Region would be a much better example of that, though, wouldn't it?
@@nuvaboy Yes, its similar. Maybe the two would even be worth a comparison or a look at how they are equal in some and different in other aspects.
@@xinlu2806 Yes, or maybe even go deeper into whether, and if so, how light rail/Stadtbahnen are too much of a compromise between tram and metro to be any good at their job 😃, as he alluded to here
6:47 looks pretty much like the new trams that will be introduced soon to Mannheim and Rhine-Neckar Region in South-West Germany, which is pretty much similar in concept to the Karlsruhe Tram-Train system but with narrow gauge (1000mm) tracks.
The reason is simple: it's basically the same Skoda ForCity Smart Artic model. The Helsinki model was basically pre-developed in-house by HKL (now City Transport Ltd.) then tendered with the resulting very specific requirements. The winning bid was Transtech, a Finnish company, which during the process was acquired by Skoda
A little clarification,
Aviapolis and Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (HEL) are in Vantaa, a seperate city just north of Helsinki
I love living next to a station of the droplet shaped railroad (here in Martinlaakso, Vantaa), it takes exactly 20 minutes to get to the city center. I used to live in Kamppi/Etu-Töölö, there I walked everywhere or took the tram. I am an infrastructure nerd and videos like this one always sparks my interest
The Helsinki transit system seems alot like the Oslo transit system. Boath have simmular tram networks and commuter Rail networks. But in Oslo the Metro Network are a circle with many branches. The Bus Network in Oslo are also verry well developt.
They definitely remind me of each other!
We in Portugal have 2 areas with metros lines connecting airports, the metro of Lisboa and the metro os Porto. The last one have fast and slow metro in the same lines but with different tasks. Fast metro is similar to regional trains and slow metro is the best to use inside the streets of big city with people nearby.
A few important note about Helsinki transit.
1: It spawn the game Cities in motion that is the prequel to Cities skylines
2: It was where the video to the 90 song Freestyler was recorded.
Here, in Yerevan there are minibuses, buses, trolleybuses, metro and rail. Most are poorly managed, but recently they have done much work to improve the system. And we have an underground metro branching
You should get around to covering Hamburg's transit system. Ferries, underground, suburban trains, regional trains, large bus network (some routes following old tram ways). There are some big projects underway there too, with new lines and a new mainline station.
I feel like sydney's pretty good with this. Sure trams and metro are slightly lacking compared to similarly sized european cities, but the train and bus network are large, and there is also a very useful and well run ferry network, allowing many niche (as well as mainline) trips.
Oh wow. Seeing that T in downtown takes me back to 2017 when I was in Helsinki - that city took me by surprise. I LOVED it! ❤❤❤ 2:47 Been RIGHT THERE.
6:20
the "Jokeri - Light rail" is now in use and has been stacked with more passangers then ever
i myself havent gotten to use it yet ( the route isnt for alot atleast on me ) but News articles have been having quite positive thoughts about it except some messy things like a Sharp turn always makes a loud noise in one part of the route and it has been the only negative thing about it
but i am quite happy with the state that it is at the moment as it is supposedly gonna go faster then a bus that the light rail replaced now ( number 550 from itäkeskus to Keilaniemi and its apparently faster then the bus that it replaced since the new tram has a own railway instead of sharing busy roads with cars
but also it has some of its own specific tunnels/pathways that it goes trough and since cars or almost anything isnt in the way anymore its supposedly faster
more info can be searched online trough "HSL" or Nobina ( nobina is the provider of the transmit stuff lik ebuses and probably planned out properly for the most optimised way of travel in helsinki or was apart of it)
and on the note Helsinki had a Potential Second metro in the works it was at first just thought out and then it got some contruction for some of the stations but then the project was dismissed? and was in plans but isnt properly made yet due to at the time the Extention to the Mainline Metros that im not sure if its finnished yet but for more info 11:48 you can find as ( wikipedia - U-metro ) and it was supposed to go to different stations mostly to places that are popular that have only trains and buses in use and trams so that you could go more directly then to go with a train, bus and a tram
im from helsinki and i dont know everything but the public transit is really valuable here with buying a car not seeming to be as important
What's funny as well is the fact that the HSL also offers ferry services, gotta love that
Could you please make a video about prague? I live there and it hase an amazing transport system that doesn't get the attention it deserves.
I'm not saying you should focus on that content, but in-depth videos about medium/small cities and how they can improve transit makes for excellent content imo
Glasgow has an excellent mix of suburban heavy rail and the Subway around the city, with buses filling in the gaps and even a ferry across the Clyde between Renfrew and Yoker.
this city has the same population as my city Brampton and has 10x the public transport. I could only dream for that to happen in my city
Rotterdam (588,000), in The Netherlands, is a city similar in size of Helsinki (633,00) and has a public transport system with train, metro, tram, bus, waterbus and ferry. They all use our national public transport chip card (OV-chipkaart). And there is the watertaxi, no public transport, which is very popular (750,000 passengers a year) which has its own tariff system with reasonable prices. You pay with debit or credit card on the spot or via internet in advance. Rotterdam has a metro line to The Hague Central Station as well as Intercity trains and commuter trains. It also has a high speed train connection to Antwerp, Brussels, Paris and London as well as Schiphol Airport and Amsterdam. It also has a metro line to the ferry terminal in Hoek van Holland connecting to the ferries to England and to the beach. The city is comparable to Helsinki.
note that the rotterdam-thehague metropolitan area has a population of 2.6 million compared to the 1.5 million in the helsinki metropolitan area. With the metropolitan area of helsinki being almost 4 times the surface area. Comparable in some ways, but Rotterdam-The hague is defnitely a more 'urban' and denser area.
Thanks for the great video! If you're looking for an interesting example of a relatively small city with an extensive multimodal public transport, you could try my hometown of Pilsen in the Czech Republic. It only has around 160k people but there are 3 tram lines that provide a fast link between opposite ends of the city, supplemented by a large and well designed high frequency trolleybus network and a few feeder bus lines. This way the majority of all journeys have been done by electric transit for a long time, way before electric buses became a thing.
Hey! Another really great explainer video! Thanks for that! I just noticed that you finally got your invite to Nebula! I’m glad there were enough of us to push them to get you hooked up! :-)
A "Small city" can absolutely have decent public transport. Oslo about the same size as Helsinki also have a rather large service. Metro, tram, train, ferries (turning electric) and soon all electric buses.
I think a good example of how a medium-small city can build an effective system in a challenging environment is Perugia.
Like many Italian medium cities, Perugia has a hilltop historic centre and sprawling modern suburbs on the foothills. Some years ago, they built a “mini metro” (basically, single cable cars running on a steel beam at a very short interval ) that connects a huge P+R facility in the Western suburbs to the ancient centre via the main train station.
Past the railway station -where it connects with a regional rail besides the mainline- the metro goes underground into the hill. From the underground end station, passengers can reach a number of areas in the old centre through a system of public escalators that reuse existing tunnels, some of which date back to the Middle Ages.
Would love to see a video on this!
I thought he was about to talk about the 2 smallest cities in Europe with metro networks : Rennes and Lausanne ... Although I feel like I'm missing an Eastern European city, I remember watching a video about a very small touristic city with the smallest metro line I've ever seen. That was so cute !
Wasn't that some ski resort in Austria? I might be wrong but I think I remember seeing that too.
Helsinki is one of the best cities in the world in many ways. Not just public transport. However a public transport is the best indicator for city quality.
Metro systems serving airports: Heathrow, Newcastle, Nuremberg, Paris Orly (under construction), Istanbul SAW (and soon IST)
Yea, but I wouldn’t call these Northern Europe!
@@RMTransit UK ones perhaps! I must have missed you say "Northern" in the video!
Leicester had a super little, compact system up to 1949. It looked enviously at its neighbour, Nottingham with its new tramway system, then did nothing.
Leicester has copied the Workplace Parking Levy, so that’s a start
I love your videos👍 Can you talk about the Hamburg U- Bahn it’s a very interesting system with a long history and it’s getting some major extensions in the next years?
On the Northern-European airport connection topic. Tallinn has its airport connected by tram, altough it is even smaller of a capital than Helsinki, around 440 000 people. The trams stop just outside the terminal and take about 20 minutes to the centre where you can change to the other 3 tram lines, or to an army of buses on a completly underground bus terminal, similar to Kamppi in Helsinki.
This is a very interesting video. Now I used to work for New Zealand Rail in the 1980's and the thinking there was the more service you provide and the more customers you attract, the more loss you will make. This is because an increase in custom will only increase the demand for peak-hour services, which means that the additional capacity to meet this demand will necessarily be idle in the off-peak. And, in the anglo-saxon world at least, everything must make a profit. So the thinking was to discourage ridership, and if possible shut it down.
I recommend researching Belleville Ontario Canada and their transit system. It's done quite well for a small city.
Thanks for so much for doing this video
One thing that might be interesting to look into for very small cities in north america is Sudbury's upgraded and rebranded transit system- formerly greater Sudbury transit, now GOVA as of 2019. they've got some major routes on a 15 minute peak frequency, and the last buses are around 11 pm-midnight (i think even on Sundays.) Very impressive compared to cities of a similar size in the U.S and Canada. Most of Kingston, ontario's routes end at 8 on Sundays, and they're at 30 min peak frequency. Kingston's metro area just overtook Sudbury's in the 2021 census so they're lagging behind for sure.
I expected a mention about many tram and light railway projects currently under construction or in late stage of preparation (Jokeri line is far not the only one - at least new light rail to Laajasalo island with the longest and tallest bridge in Finland could have been mentioned) + planned new railway connections to Tampere and Turku including connecting airport to the main railway line.
Helsinki tram stops are quite convenient, in the busiest blocks they are quite close to each other, enough that you could even run to catch it if it passed your stop. Most are couple to few hundred meters apart but i would say they are well placed. Used to live in the very center of the city.
🥳🥳🥳 Helsinki transit! This was a happy surprise!
Hope you enjoyed!
"Broad gauge", I let you know that the official Helsinki metro gauge is actually 1521,5 mm!
This is due to hazy historical reasons but for similar reasons why some "standard gauge" is actually 1432 mm.
E; since this video was released, the western quad tracking of the sunburban rail (1524mm!) has been approved.
Fare gates were tried in Sörnäinen station in helsinki some 15 years ago, however they were removed from service just after one day. The reason was that Helsinki has had a cellphone metro ticket for 20 years and the fare gates had no way to verify what was back then a SMS ticket. Currently mobile app (HSL app) based tickets are also very popular, but NFC support is still spotty in mobile world so fare gates would still be useless for mobile tickets.
There’s an even smaller case in Spain, Bilbao, whose mixed urban-suburban metro system (transforming a former narrow gauge train line), along with light rail and tram services (all together ride about 100 million passengers a year for a metropolitan population of less than a million people) can be a good lesson to learn from.
And the architectural design by Norman Foster is also a pretty good example on how to build high quality public infrastructures!
I live in Memphis Tennessee a big city that has plenty of jobs and businesses but don't have the proper transit for it. Throughout the past years I have been researching all of the major cities transit in the biggest states worldwide and I couldn't believe that all of these places got so many transit options including my favorite one metro rail to light rail. So that being said. as a sketch artist I have been designing an evolution video that will pin point how Memphis Tennessee would be if we had a metro & light rail system operating through the heart of Memphis and all urban areas of the county including the outer cities like Nashville , Knoxville , Arlington , Chattanooga , and many more cities in Tennessee. And having this for my state can help improve our bus system as well. Memphis transit goes by the code name ( Memphis MATA ).
My hometown of Stuttgart, Germany could be interesting for a future video: Not only do we have an extensive light rail (Stadtbahn) network, but also a rack railway and a funicular, both of which aren't just tourist attractions, but also important routes for commuters.
The heritage trams on 1000mm gauge using the same tracks as the standard-gauge Stadtbahn ("triple-rail track") are quite interesting as well.
Funicular ehh? A Finnish city of Turku does also have a funicular, but it's more commonly refered as "jumikulaari" Combining the words jumissa and funikulaari (stuck, jammed + funicular) Kinda hard to translate that. In 2019, jumikulaari was out of operation on 57 days! (120 days during it's first two years)
the London Underground Piccadilly line does go to Heathrow, however this is complimented by 2 mainline rail routes (Heathrow Express, and Elizabeth Line)
An interesting note about the difference of metro and commuter rail around helsinki:
Some 5 km north of the western branch of the metro, there is a rail line called "Rantarata" (main line heading west). The commuter trains on that line have a very similar spacing between the stops as the metro line. The main difference is the service frequency (3-6 minutes for metro, depending on where you are, compared to 10-15 minutes on the commuter trains. In terms of travel time, both of these lines are about as fast: Rail from Kauklahti to Central station takes 29 minutes (24 km), and Metro from Kivenlahti (the end of metro line, about 4 km S-SE from Kauklahti) to Central station takes also 29 minutes (22 km). However, during peak times, the commuter rail has express services that stop only on major stations, and does the journey in 22 minutes.
Oh, and just as a comparison, you can get from Central station to Järvenpää (37 km N-NE from Central station) with a commuter train in 29 minutes.
The western line will see expansion in the near future (building quad tracks), which will make it easier to increase the number of commuter trains and intercity services without disturbing one other, and it also makes it much easier to operate express services for commuter trains.